Torn Asunder with Kiki Howell, and a Moment of Squee

Greetings all! Kiki Howell has come to visit today as part of the All Things Romantic Suspense tour, and she's brought with her a yummy excerpt from her latest work, Torn Asunder.

Before we get to her interview and the steamy reading, kindly permit me a quick moment of squee. The indispensable QueryTracker.net website hosted a pitch contest this month for a one-line pitch and the first 100 words of a completed manuscript. Regular readers of this blog know I'm on an agent hunt for a non-romance (I know, *gasp!*) psych thriller titled White Lies, so I entered. I found out today that I'd won a 50-page read and a query evaluation. Even if the agent decides my work isn't for her, I'm super excited at the opportunity to have my query letter critiqued by a pro :D

Now then, on to what you're really here for. Welcome, Ms. Howell! Let us begin, as always, with some cover art--truly lovely despite its girl cooties :-p--and a blurb:

Aubrey Griffen is a witch whose true reasons for coming to London soon fall to the wayside when she catches the eye of Edmund Bryant, the Marquess of Dalysbury.  He seduces her into a whirlwind romance until the lies and threats of his mother force her to flee to Triaill Brimuir, a secret island of her ancestors off the coast of Ireland. Edmund goes after her only to be hit by Aubrey’s confusion and anger when she magically transforms him into an elemental beast of her own creation.   

However, it is when Edmund’s lust mysteriously turns him back into a man that the couple are forced to deal with a family secret and untold of powers.  Now, Edmund must learn to shift himself into the beast in order to save her in a battle of black verses white magic. 

Fraught with scenes of explicit intimacy, romantic spells and mystical shapeshifting, Torn Asunder is a unique blending of the age of manners with sexual magic.

Genres: Historical (Regency), Paranormal (Witches & Shifters), Erotic, Romantic Suspense

Warnings: Explicit Graphic Language, Violence

Want to know more? Kiki was kind enough to answer my odd questions and provide us with an excerpt, beneath the jump.

The Blog Tour Continues, Now with Deleted Scene! (And Random Good News!)

Morning-- er, afternoon, folks. Apologies for the late start today; had to take my mom to the eye doc's this morning (she had cataract surgery yesterday and now doesn't need her glasses--I'm jealous!) and the wait was foreeeeeeeeeeeever.

(Aaaand, I just reminded myself of REO Speedwagon . . . When I said that I love you I meant that I love you foreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeever!)

Anyway, lots of excitement today on the Anchored blog tour. First up is a stop at author Brita Addams's blog, where those of you who've already bought the book (or those of you considering it) are in for a real treat: Brita has posted the entire deleted prologue--all five pages of it! The prologue was cut during the final edit so that the book could start right with the action, but there's a lot of history in that bit that I think readers will find interesting, and I'm very happy to be able to share it with you all. The second stop today is at my dear friend and Break and Enter co-writer Aleksandr Voinov's blog (and he's also written a few things himself here and there ;-p). He's apparently an even bigger slacker than I am, though, as his review isn't up yet. But visit his blog anyway; he's brilliant and occasionally funny and always full of wonderful insight about the M/M niche and publishing in general. Aleks has posted an interview that focuses in large part on the darker side of my fiction, which we all know is the bigger half by far ;-)

On a completely different note, AllRomanceEbooks has just written to tell me they'd like to use one of my short stories from Sublime as their free read in an upcoming weekly newsletter, so I'm super excited about that :D Don't know yet when it'll be out--they could well plan months ahead--but I'll be sure to let you know when it is.

Also in the good news department . . . If you follow me on Twitter, you may know that I've been on the hunt for an agent to represent White Lies, a psychological thriller about a reporter who goes missing in Afghanistan for three months and wakes up in Turkey with no crew, a lot of bruises, and a giant hole in his memory. The first thing I discovered on the agent hunt is that it's easier to get published than it is to get representation . . . especially when you're trying to cross genres and there's no guarantee your romance fans will read your thrillers. But, despite that, I'm confident and in good spirits about it, and even managing the long waits without chewing up the walls too badly. It helps to have many encouraging moments, such as the one last night where an agent I'd absolutely love to be represented by contacted me and asked for the full manuscript. I queried her back in the beginning of December, and she asked for the first 50 pages the very next day. I know it can take several months for an agent to review a partial, so I wasn't expecting to hear back from her so soon. Fingers crossed she likes what she sees!

Well, that's enough rambling for today. Thanks as always for hanging in, and I hope to see you over at Brita and Aleks's blogs today. And remember, as always, one commenter on each blog will win a free book, and one commenter on each blog will win a free swag bag!

Unleashing the Muse

This has been an interesting month for me. I told myself in November that I could spend the rest of the year working on anything I wanted that wasn't Crescendo: Book II of Song of the Fallen. The idea was to spend some time and creative energy moving away from the series that swallowed most of my year (in the best possible way though, I assure you. Well . . . okay, maybe the second-best possible way) and focusing on projects that had fallen to the wayside. It's easy to let things slide when you always have an excuse ("I'm working on the novel!"), so I decided to bank that excuse, and bank the novel, and see where it would take me.

(Worry not, Counterpoint fans; it will still be out this fall.)

The first thing I did was revisit an old story sitting in a drawer (and by "drawer" I mean 2003 Dell laptop missing both the "m" and the comma key), a short little novel about modern-day slavery. I remembered, suddenly, my fondness for that piece when I'd written it, all the things I'd hoped to say with it, and--let's face it--all the dark kinks I'd written it to indulge. I thought, Hey, why not, I've got time now. I pulled it out, polished it up, and sold it in a week to the first house I subbed it to. That story of course is Anchored: Belonging Book One, releasing January 17 with Noble Romance Publishing. (**Insert obligatory plug for awesome, prize-filled Release Party Blog Tour here**)